Exploring the Climatic Potential of Somo’s Surf Spot for Tourist Destination Management

Abstract

Surfing is one of the most popular activities in coastal tourism resorts. However, the sport depends strongly on the met-ocean weather conditions, particularly on the surface wind-generated waves that reach the coast. This study provides examples of how users’ needs and user perspectives are considered by climate data specialists to develop needed, highly useful information addressing human and social needs. In this vein, the climate analysis of such data can provide input on the expected length of a surfing season, according to the surfer’s level of expertise. In addition, other water sports, such as SUP Wave and windsurfing, among others, might be indicated when surfing conditions are not optimal. Finally, the safety of surfers and other tourists who venture into the sea is also dependent on those conditions. We collaborated with the surfing community to define a series of indices for quantifying surfing days (SD), surfing days stratified by surfers’ skills (SDS), alternate offers (AOs), and surfers’ and swimmers’ safety (SuS and SwS). These are of general applications but require wind and wave data at a very fine scale as the input. To illustrate the potential of our indices, we applied them to the Somo beach (Cantabria, Spain). We downscaled a global wave hindcast dataset covering a 30-year period to a spatial resolution of 100 m to obtain wave-surfing information at Somo’s surf spot. The results confirmed Somo’s status as a year-round surf spot, with SD values of 229.5 days/year and monthly values between 22 days/month and 16 days/month. SDS showed different seasonal peaks according to the surfers’ skills. Beginners’ conditions occurred more often in the summer (18.1 days/month in July), intermediate surfers’ conditions appeared in the transitional seasons (14.1 days/month in April), and advanced and big-wave riders in the winter (15.1 days/month in January and 0.7 days/month, respectively). The AO index identified the SUP wave values of 216 days/year. Wind water sports presented values of 141.6 days/year; conversely, SUP sports were possible on only 7.4 days/year. SuS and SwS identified different seasonal hazard values, decreasing from the winter, autumn, and spring to minimum values in the summer.

Climate and weather-related factors limiting outdoor activities and impacting tourism: Case studies in Slovenia

“…Apart from general applications of such tourism indices, authors have studied climate and weatherrelated conditions from the perspective of tourism for specific destinations (Álvarez-Díaz et al, 2010;Boqué Ciurana et al, 2022;Font Barnet et al, 2021;Nižić and Grdić, 2018), or outdoor sport activities such as skiing (Yang and Wan, 2010; Cernaianu and Sobry, 2021;Köberl et al, 2021;Rice et al, 2022;Rujescu, 2022;Scott et al, 2020; Steiger et al, 2019;Steiger and Scott, 2020;Prettenthaler et al;, surfing (Boqué Ciurana et al, 2022; Aguilar, 2021, 2020), or whitewater rafting (Bowman et al, 2022;Chen et al, 2017;Faria et al, 2022;Polat et al, 2016). Slovenia, with an tourism sector contributing an estimated ~8.4% (~3.6 billion EUR in 2017 (OECD, 2020;SiStat, 2022)) to the national GDP, is an…”

“…In the past, various tourism indices have been developed and proposed to take into account the importance of climate, weather, and extreme weather for tourism (Boqué Ciurana et al, 2022). Two widely used indices are the Tourism Climate Index (TCI) (Mieczkowski, 1985) -integrating climatic variables (i.e.…”

Opportunities in Identifying and Marketing Windsport Tourism Destinations: High-Resolution Wind Analysis

“…Natural resources prove to be important physical evidence for windsport experiences. Detailed natural resources analyses are of great importance to destination managers and marketers to support strategic planning at the destination level [46]. Ignorance of the availability of natural resources in combination with expected increased pressure from European windsport tourists can lead to unsustainable growth of windsport tourism at target locations.…”

Historical change and variability of spectral wind wave climate in the New York Bight

“…A quantitative understanding of wave climate change and variability has, thus, a wide range of applications such as coastal development and management, climate impact adaptation assessment (Weisse et al, 2015), wave energy harvesting and coastal/ offshore structure design (McInnes et al, 2021). Changes in wave climatology may also affect the local economy of coastal cities, which often depends on activities incorporating the sea element such as tourism or surfing (Ciurana et al, 2022;Font Barnet et al, 2021).…”